Now that SCO has a cool $50 million to play with, it has decided to get a new lawyer to handle the Red Hat litigation. Well, can you blame them?

They have retained Jack B. Blumenfeld of Morris, Nichols, a Delaware firm that seems to have a solid IP record, particularly in patent and trade secret cases. The attorney substitution document was signed by the old attorney and Mr. Blumenfeld on October 15.

I'm guessing we may not see a motion to move this case to Utah after all. Mr. Blumenfeld "serves on the Third Circuit Lawyers Advisory Committee. He has also been a member of the District Court Advisory Committee for the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, the Civil Justice Reform Act Advisory Group for that Court, and the Intellectual Property Advisory Committee of that Court." You can read about him here (just click on his name on the list on the right of the page, and there is a picture of him there too) and about the firm on this page:

"At the core of our patent litigation practice is, and always will be, the venue of our home state of Delaware, where for years we have appeared in nearly 40% of the IP cases. In some of those cases, we have served as local counsel, where lead counsel or a corporate client has selected us because of the considerable assistance our experience can provide. In others, we have served as lead counsel, most recently in cases involving our clients, Pharmacia, Dowa, Sony, Merck, Igen International, Advanced Energy and Corn Products International.

"Over the years, the Delaware District Court has acquired a well-deserved reputation as the premier venue for patent litigation. Morris Nichols in that time has likewise acquired the reputation as the premier patent litigation firm in Delaware. Indeed, the breadth and depth of the Morris Nichols IP experience is such that in recent national surveys of patent litigation firms, Morris Nichols can be found in the top five in cases filed, defended, or both."

Any time you are going to go to court, you want a lawyer the judge knows well, assuming that the impression formed was favorable, and if there is no son of the state's US Senator available to retain. It's a definite advantage to have an attorney who is well known in his field and who knows the judges there well, too and knows what they like and don't like. So, here SCO is spending its money wisely, it would appear, to try for that advantage. Of course, when you get a new lawyer, you usually are granted some delay time, for the new lawyer to get up to speed, which probably doesn't bother SCO much.

Obviously, I have no inside information on why this is happening, because I am not a SCO confidante and all I know is what I see in the attorney substitution document, but looking at the web site of the firm that is being replaced, it does appear that it is more a general practice litigation and corporate law firm, as opposed to concentrating on IP the way the new firm says it does. And that is the other thing you want in an attorney, a specialist in your problem. Of course, you can only get what you can afford.